Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Mac vs. PC

It's a debate as old as time itself. Well, that's not true. But it's a debate that's at least been raging since the 1980s. So, I'll rephrase that first sentence: It's a debate as old as me. Which is better? Mac or PC? For me the question is more like, "Which one makes me less want to punch people to death?" From personal experience I can tell you, it's Mac all the way.

A PC can be set up to run on various operating systems, but most people who own one use Windows. Just to clarify, my experience with PCs is based on using Windows. ("PCs" in this post will also be used to refer to laptops that run on Windows.) Granted, a PC can be the right choice for you depending on what you want to use it for. If you want to use your computer to type Word documents or play Solitaire, a PC might be fine. However, if you want to type Word documents and play Solitaire, your PC might explode.

Okay, maybe that last sentence was hyperbole. (Or maybe it wasn't. Can you afford to take that chance!?) At the Pancake household our internet is hooked up through my fiancee's Gateway, and since our wireless router is currently not functioning, I'm stuck using this hunk of scrap whenever I want to use the internet.

I hope you appreciate these blog posts, because sometimes while I'm writing them I want to slam my head off the computer desk until I forget who I am. I type my articles directly into the interface on Blogger, mostly because if I type them up externally and then copy and paste them, more often than not the spacing gets all weird and I have to spend way too much time fixing that. But I do like to have a backup, just in case the autosave function on Blogger fails me, so I copy what I'm writing every few minutes and paste it into Notepad. For some reason minimizing or restoring Notepad while Firefox (internet browser) is open causes Windows to struggle. Sometimes it gets to the point where the computer starts making the mysterious grinding noise (what the hell is it doing?) and everything freezes up. These are not complicated programs that require tons of memory to run, so it's beyond me why this would happen.

Let's compare this to my Macbook, which I bought refurbished and is (I'm relatively sure) older than the PC I'm sitting in front of now. While I'm editing videos on my Mac I often have iMovie (video editing software) open along with Garageband (a music creation program) and a program I use for copying b-movie footage from DVDs. Having these programs running simultaneously has never caused my Mac to freeze up or crash, even if I had Notepad (!!!) open at the same time!

Speaking of videos, there's a huge difference in the quality I've seen when burning a DVD of my finished products with a PC or a Mac. Years ago, when I first started editing my own movies, I burned one onto a DVD with the PC I had used to edit the movie (which in itself was ripping-out-my-hair frustrating). The finished DVD featured a dragging, skipping menu screen. The video itself played alright once it got started, except in any scene where I had put music into the background. In these scenes the music would skip every time I had cut to a different shot. Now this PC I used to create the disc was fairly old, perhaps one of the first generation of them to have a DVD burner built in, but my Macbook is at least 10 years old and the DVDs I burn on that come out flawless. Not to mention the menus are sleeker and more visually dynamic yet don't sputter and slow down like your Great Uncle Bernie after he gets too animated telling a story.

I suppose most of the people who read the blog don't edit their own moving pictures, but how about watching them on your laptop? Maybe you like to put one on in your room for background noise during your sexual relations, because we all like to hear Batman fighting villains while we're getting it on. No? You don't know what you're missing. Anyway, certain DVDs are douchebags that think the program that comes bundled on the disc is better to play the movie with than the one you selected as a default and use every damn time. On my HP laptop that I bought when I started college the default DVD playing program opens up first, and the stupid Sony player that pops up when you put in Breaking Bad starts sometime after the disc is already playing on the default. Once the Sony player pops up, the DVD starts skipping like crazy until it sounds like a Dubstep remix of Breaking Bad. Okay, so just minimize the default program and close the Sony player. Simple, right? Well, there's the three minute waiting period while the computer grinds and buzzes, but after that it's simple. If this same thing happens on the Mac I don't notice the second DVD player is open until I'm done watching the movie, because the Mac is able to handle that, apparently.

I could go on and on, but I do try to keep these posts relatively short. (Notice I said "try".) I would like to point out, for anybody who may find themselves shopping for their next computer soon, that Macs don't generally get infected with viruses and other malware like PCs do. In the four years I've been using my Macbook I've never had a virus. On the flip side, the Gateway I currently use for internet access requires a scan for malware at least once a week. The difference between operating systems and why one is susceptible to computer germs and the other isn't has been explained to me, but I don't understand what I was told well enough to explain it to somebody else. I'll just make the assumption that Macs are built by magical wizards, and PCs are built by the apprentices of such wizards. The apprentices are very eager but not fully trained, and their magic computer spells cause problems, and the spells they use to solve the problems cause more problems.

I'm not trying to get every PC user in the world to switch to Apple products. Personally, it doesn't make a difference to me what you use, unless you're going to ask me to help you with something computer-related, in which case I reserve the right to berate your poor choice of computer. I do strongly recommend switching to a Mac if using a PC is causing you to suffer from screaming/cursing fits, pulling out your own hair, or smashing your mouse off the desk until it explodes. A Mac might cost you more money, but in five years it will still be working fine while a five-year-old PC is using oxygen and a walker.

Alright, time to post this and shut down the computer. Oh, yes! That reminds me of one more difference that makes me prefer Mac to Windows: when I shut my Macbook down it actually just shuts the fuck down in like 10 seconds, whereas the PC spends about seven or eight minutes contemplating the act of shutting down before it actually does. That's weird and frustrating, and it's one of the many reasons that any computer I ever own will be adorned with a picture of a little apple with a bite taken out.